Tuesday, January 28, 2014

This is a prospector on Venus with carnivorous blossoms all around him and mirage-plants in the background.

The more I read the story, the more I enjoy, conceptually, the Venus he created, as well as the ethos behind it; though Lovecraft was quite arcane in many of his beliefs, in In the Walls of Eryx he shows humans primarily as the villains who are unjustly invading lands not their own and killing justly-hostile natives--themes that primarily wouldn't enter the consciousness and works of scifi writers for many decades and mirrors, both in its overall themes of anti-imperialism and environmentalism, as well as its gloominess, the 1975 George RR Martin story, And Seven Times Never Kill Man.

Though he still had his prejudices, Lovecraft toward the end of his relatively young life was certainly seeing past a human-centric universe; this combined with his racial prejudices shows an amazing and extreme example of cognitive dissonance within a truly brilliant mind.

Here's the full illustration:

Here's some concept work for his helmet/mask and fire-gun:

And here's some conceptual illustrations for Venus' carnivorous plant life.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

I originally did the sketch for this five years ago, when I was originally conceiving of an artbook of Lovecraft's works, but shelved it, both the painting and the book, till I felt I had the skill to execute them properly. Unfortunately I've thrown away the vast majority of my old sketches, so I sadly can't do a comparison between the original and the final version, which makes me sad...

Here's the painting as a cover for a Lovecraft short story collection:

A port city from Lovecraft's The Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath. In the short novel the city buildings are loosely described as being made of black basalt and being angular and looking somewhat similar to the stones from The Giant's Causeway. Also it's supposed to be a very unpleasant place to be, so I gave little points and edges to the designs of some of the buildings, as well as giving most of the lighting an unnatural glow, to give that feeling. This is the first painting I plan to do of Dylath-Leen, with the other one being from far above and will be a rendering of the entire city-scape--not fun but certainly worth doing it.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

A painting inspired by HP Lovecraft's little-known sci-fi short story, In the Walls of Eryx. The narrative story itself isn't one of his masterworks but the environments, creatures and overall conception is quite unique and evocative.

The story surrounds a highly dangerous, jungle-strewn Venus where mining crews search the planet for special stones that power the cities of Earth, while the native aliens defend their planet with primitive tools. The 8-foot tall aliens, unlike those in the similarly conceived Avatar, were giant reptile-like creatures with tentacles on their chests.

Being that Lovecraft was writing the story in the WW1 period, I tried to add in some outfit ideas from military uniforms of the time, while also making it loosely "futuristic".